We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Mrs. BD loves flowers and all that - she and her pals call it "plant material" because they use all sorts of things in their design efforts.
Often, however, she will just toss flowers in a vase without too much design except basic color coordination and texture variation, and it is very pleasant.
Here are her tips to keep cut flowers looking good in water for a week or more:
- A fresh sharp cut to each stem at a 45 degree angle, and warm water
- 1 tsp of bleach per quart of water (prevents rotten, cloudy water which destroys the blooms)
- 1 tablespoon of sugar per quart of water (feeds the flowers - they aren't dead yet)
- Never let a leaf be submerged - but you can submerge blooms for cool effects
I've seen enough cloisers and cloister gardens in Europe to occupy my brain for a lifetime, but we went down to The Cloisters yesterday with friends to go on the Medieval Gardening tour. The museum overlooks the Hudson River near the northern tip of Manhattan, not far from where Alexander Hamilton's farm and country house was located.
Good fun. 1 1/2 hrs. Excellent docent, clearly loves her topic. She spent 15 minutes on the plants in the 15th C. unicorn tapestries besides going outdoors to discuss the medieval gardens. (I think most people go to the Cloisters just to see the unicorn tapestries, the subject of which is a symbolic mingling of romantic and sexual love with Christianity but it is difficult to understand them without an informed introduction to them.)
A Hortus conclusus is an enclosed garden, taken by monks from the Roman enclosed gardens, with a Christian symbolic gloss. (As I always say, if you want to understand the Romans, one must look at oneself. We of the Anglosphere are Romans.)
It's taken me many years to learn one thing: Wwherever you go, Always Take The Tour first. Be humble and learn.
This is one of our dwarf Cortlands today, ready to be picked but the fruit will remain good on the tree for a few weeks, at least. If we had bothered to fertilize, it would probably have doubled the fruit. I will fertilize them next year.
There is still so much good green forage in the woods and fields, and there are so many healthy wild apple trees out there, that the deer haven't bothered our domesticated apple trees a bit.
As fall planting season approaches here in the Northern Hemisphere, here are two simple tips to save you money and hassle:
1. When you plant a tree or shrub, space it to what its size will be in 10 or 20 years, if not more. Time flies, and the next thing you know you'll be cutting some of them down so they don't jam eachother into poor health. This error is commonly made when planting things too near the foundation of a house. Landscapers love to jam things in everywhere because they can sell you more stuff, and it looks better right away. I have made this foolish error enough times to have truly learned it: I am having to cut down a $175 fir today which I had planted, five years ago, too close to a group - because it looked good at first.
2. When you read that a plant needs "full sun," that means direct sun from morning until dusk. It does not mean full sun for part of the day. Furthermore, half-sun means half-day sun - preferably morning light. More sun is not better for a half-sun plant: just ask any Rhododendron or most Hydrangeas.
Oh, almost forgot a third: Never plant Wisteria anywhere, unless you have full-time gardeners to keep your place looking neat and under control. Take it from me. Just don't do it, no matter how delightful it is in May. Pick some other vine for shade unless continual warfare is your plan.
I fought with these darn things all weekend (with the help of a BD daughter). I think the trick is either to yank them out when young, or clip them low and spray the stump with poison.
If you live in the Northeast, your gardens and plantings are, right now, being attacked by the unwanted and unwelcome alien Porcelainberry.
This aggressive Asian weed vine was introduced as a decorative ground cover, but it is a cancer with the ability to grow 15' or more per year, and to smother anything you have planted. If you pull it up, get the entire root - or poison it.
The birds poop the seeds everywhere, so they come up everywhere around here. Especially in gardens. Their roots are tenacious.
As its leaves demonstrate, it is a member of the grape family and it can be confused with the native wild grape, which is a much less aggressive plant. You can read all about Porcelainberry here, and about how to try to get rid of it.
It's been Babyland here this Spring at ye olde New England homestead. Lots of nests, lots of baby birds fledging right now.
Within 15 yards of our cabin, this year we have successfully harbored nests or homes of:
2 pairs of Robins 1 House Wren family 1 Mourning Dove family (in our Wisteria, pooping on our porch chairs) 1 Catbird family 1 Cardinal family 1 Ruby-Throated Hummingbird family - a male and female are around all day, so I assume a tiny nest very close by 2 Cottontail bunny families - 2 litters each, I think and, just a bit further away, a Red Tailed Hawk family which feeds on the baby bunnies and baby squirrels 1 (at least) Chipmunk family Several Grey Squirrel families 1 Red Squirrel family
What's the secret? No cats and plenty of dense shrubberies, gardens, and evergreens. A big brush pile and some weed patches too. When the leaves fall, I will find other nests I didn't realize were there. Usually, a Song Sparrow, Goldfinch, or a nifty little Warbler nest.
I did not have the chance to do a breeding list for the entire Farm this year. It's easily done: You go out at 5 AM in early June and cover all of your land, listening for territorial songs while keeping your eyes open. At night, the owls. Next year...
Pic: The House Wren family is raising their babies in there. Every once in a while, one peeks out.
We grow them in pots. Pretty colors, but the main point is for salads.
The smaller leaves (the largest leaves are a bit tough) add a spicy, peppery flavor to a salato misto. We also like to throw Nasturtium flowers on top of a salad (after tossing it). The flowers look good and taste good.
This is one of our Pee Wee Oakleaf Hydrangeas. It shows what happens when you prune them: almost no blooms. Even though it is a dwarf version Oakleaf, it outgrew its space and I had to shape it aggressively this winter.
One of our white mophead varieties - Blushing Bride - in bloom right now, and, in typical hydrangea style, with a little mid-day wilt from being planted (by me) in a tad too much sunshine:
Time-saving projects always take more time than one expects.
We have always been partial to a gardening mix with hanging baskets, large pots, and planters. According to my local expert Mrs. BD, pots can add structure and height to flower gardens. The only thing that drives her nuts are clashing colors, and she does not like to permit annuals to steal the show from precious perennials and flowering shrubs with their frequently more subtle colors. (Furthermore, she believes that varied and interesting foliage is just as important in a garden as are blooms.) Red annuals? Fugeddaboutit. She says they are for McDonald's and banks - commercial-looking. She is right that overly-bright flowers look commercial and tacky rather than homey unless they are the only thing you are growing.
You could say that she feels that using any annuals is cheating, but I am not so doctrinaire about the elite gardening rules.
Our gardening trick for in-ground gardens is to use plenty of mulch instead of using irrigation, but if you enjoy pots and planters the way the Italians do, and do not always remember to, or bother to, lug watering cans around every night or every morning with all of the other things that need doing, you can assemble one of these sorts of cool dripper systems, set the timer, and forget about them until frost. Our cousins on Nantucket use them for all of their rental houses, and they work great. The mini-hoses are invisible.
Trust me. They'll look much better and grow better with daily water. Pots and planters dry out in one sunny summer day. (Smaller pots don't even make it through a day.) The occasional light dose of Miracle Gro in planters doesn't hurt either.
Everybody has an opinion on pruning tomato plants. Here's my view of the subject.
First, I'll assume we are growing "Indeterminate" types of tomatoes, i.e. vine tomatoes as opposed to the tree-like ("determinate," aka "bush" tomatoes) ones often grown in pots. Left alone, vine tomatoes will grow 10+ feet along the ground, as you can often see in gardens in Bermuda, but we stake them.
Up here in New England (Yankeeland), we need to prune them because our short growing season doesn't allow much time for good fruit formation. We have to prune most of the suckers and plenty of their leaves, and we cut their tops off in July or August - all so they will put their energy into good fruit and not into further pointless growth.
Further south, diligent pruning is less important.
And even though I grow mine in fine soft soil, I fertilize them with liquid fertilizer whenever I think of it. I usually have lots of plants, but only ended up with 10-12 this year of around 5 varieties.
Here's the best site I have seen on indeterminate tomato vine gardening. For all of the effort, and despite our short season, it is well-worth it when you pick one on a hot day and eat it in the garden like an apple. A tomato should be hot, with little salt on it.
Another one of our hydrangeas, a lacecap variety, in bloom right now. Late June/early July is Hydrangealand up here. It happens right after the first bloom of the roses fade, and we try to have at least one variety in bloom through the entire summer:
The Nikko Blue hydrangea and its variants are classic plants in Yankeeland. Mine are in their full glory today.
Hydrangeas are the sorts of things that make a house a home.
Here are three important tips for those who grow hydrangeas of any type: first, they like moist (but well-drained) soil, hence their name. Second, full-day direct sun is too much for most of them unless you have irrigation. Third, prune them with caution: you have to first determine whether they are macrophylla or paniculata, etc. Prune them wrong and you get no bloom. Better yet, don't prune them at all unless you have to.
(More general shrub pruning info: Except for hedging or shaped shrubs, mature shrubs can or should be pruned at ground level - not from the top - removing 25-30% of the woodiest growth to keep the plant young and vigorous. This is especially important with shrubs like Lilacs. I will try to dig out my old pruning posts. Always study the correct pruning technique for a given plant before attacking anything with a sharp tool. Never prune young shrubs.)
Lots of plants are called "laurel" without being real members of the Lauraceae family. Bay Laurel and Avocado are true laurels.
Our eastern Mountain Laurel, the state plant of CT which grows in dense, impenetrable 20' high thickets on our hills, is not a true laurel. Neither are the Cherry Laurels, which are (strangely) in the family Rosaceae, genus Prunus - same genus as roses, apples, and cherries. (Seems anything can get called "laurel" if it has glossy oval evergreen leaves.)
The Cherry Laurels (Prunus laurocerasus) appear in several forms, subspecies, or cultivars in the US, and few are native to the US. Here are a few of them. I like them for the lush, tropical evergreen appearance, and the birds like them for winter cover and for spring nesting.
Like hybrid Rhodadendrons, Zone 6 is pushing their limit unless they are sheltered, next to a warm building, or near salt water. The southern US is really a better place for them, but I like experimenting. Although they are considered semi-shade or filtered light plants, up here they seem to enjoy plenty of sun.
I have three varieties: the big, upright, fast-growing "Skip" Laurels ('Schipkaensis') which make a great tall (10-15' hedge), a few small hedges of Otto Luyken English Laurel, and a couple of handsome Portuguese Laurels, a compact, slow-growing rounded type with nice red stems. The latter two were produced by Monrovia.
Wonderful plants, all things considered, and a much better bet than trying to make the very picky Mountain Laurel and hybrid Rhodys happy in this neck of the woods. Mountain Laurel, like Blueberry, only grows well where it feels like growing. If they don't like the conditions, they just die, slowly.
Photos: Above: small row of Otto Luykens in from the of the wall, and some tall Skips behind. Left: A Portuguese Laurel, about 5' high.
I was surprised to stumble upon the fact that the common earthworm, the gardener's friend, is not native to the US and Canada: most worm species are "invasive" introductions from Europe, and have been spread across the country in plant material.
A few more interesting facts:
- The earthworm has been very destructive to several types of forest habitat by consuming deep forest litter (leaves). Ecologists consider them invasive pests in some habitats.
- Earthworms are killed by most pesticides. Fertilizer doesn't seem to bother them.
- Darwin calculated that earthworms can recycle and refresh the surface soil to the tune of 10 tons of soil per acre per year. Count me as a skeptic on that number, but they do churn the soil.
- Yes, some species of earthworm can regenerate lost body segments. No need for tears when you chop one with the shovel.
- Worms need food. For a wormy lawn or garden, it needs to be top-dressed or mulched with organic material. I do a generous top-dressing of peat moss or well-rotted cow manure once or twice twice a year, and after the heavy spring lawn growth, I leave the grass clippings where they fall. I like to mulch up the early autumn fallen leaves with the mowers, too.
A green lawn treated with pesticides, nurtured solely with inorganic fertilizers, and with automatic irrigation, is little more than a corpse with make-up.
Our Dicentra is beginning to bloom right now, even though it's another late spring up here and still cool. The plants begin to bloom as soon as they are out of the ground. No plant shoots up as quickly, and it's almost too early to enjoy their brief period of glory. Not counting the early bulbs, Dicentra is our first bloomer.
By August, the plant will wither up into nothing. Early-bloomers do that.
More about Bleeding Hearts here. The wild, native woodland version is white.
Serious gardeners in New England, especially food-gardeners, build coldframes to extend the growing season. Properly done, you can add at least a month to the growing season for some things.
I used to mess with things like that, but I don't bother anymore. If I lived in Maine, though, I'd definitely have a coldframe full of spinach, leaf lettuces, etc.
I've even tried putting tomatoes out in late April here, but it never works out. Milk jugs, polyurethane, etc. Big hassle. Fact is, around here, if you put them out in late May they quickly catch up to the early birds, and even exceed them because they have endured no cool weather stresses. Tomatoes do not really put on growth without warm nights - above 55 F. We are still in the 30s on some nights.
If you have money to burn, the best thing is a good-sized real greenhouse. I would attach one to the house, with interior and exterior doors, so you could just open the door and let the rich earthy and flower and herb and plant smells infuse the house. Home-grown Beefsteak tomatoes 12 months/year.
Pic is Beefsteaks, the only tomato I truly enjoy eating, especially when hot from the sun. We usually only get a few weeks of them ripening, mid-late August-early September. Is it worth the trouble? For me, it is. It is especially pleasant when you can find a big ripe one that a squirrel or chipmunk has not taken a bite out of.
We always contend that lawns are foolish things to have. Foolish, and unnatural. We prefer meadows and gardens, but everybody needs a place to play croquet or softball, or to lie in the sun with a book, growing your basal cell carcinomas and your liver spots. We reluctantly acknowledge that, in some suburban areas, a sweeping lawn is a social if not an aesthetic requirement.
All the same, we urge folks to consider how much of that lawn they might exchange for some more interesting colorful perennial or shrub borders and ground covers. A nice English garden, whether formal or informal, uses lawn as an accent and for paths - as just one component of design and mentally, I think, as a comforting symbol of safe civilization to contrast with the blooming profusion of the other plantings. Order vs. disorder. Open vs. closed. Safe vs. mysterious. Landscape design is a psycho-spiritual enterprise. This is a garden outside of London:
Here's a brief history of the American lawn. Yes, the lawn is more-or-less designed to imitate the smooth effect of a sheep-grazed pasture on an English country estate.
Today, a bit about lawn aeration, fertilizer, irrigation, earthworms, and "de-thatching." In reverse order:
"De-thatching" is a completely useless and unnecessary activity. No healthy soil needs it, and a healthy soil is the key to a decent sod. "Thatch" - old grass - will rapidly decompose or be eaten by worms in a good lawn, recycling the nutrients and keeping your worms fat and happy.
Earthworms. We said everything we know about the wonderful earthworm in this post. They aerate and enrich the sod. If your sod doesn't contain plenty of them, something is wrong with it.
Irrigation. No natural lawn requires irrigation. If you try to grow lawn grasses in places they don't want to grow, like the Arizona desert, they will need irrigation of course. Around here, people with money to burn irrigate their lawns to trick the grass into staying green all summer, and not enter their natural summer dormancy when they are apt to turn brown. Lawn grasses grow the way they do because our mowing cuts their tops off while they keep trying to grow to their natural height and to bear their seeds. It must be frustrating to the poor things. In natural conditions, grasses grow to their full height, bear their seeds (say, in early July) and then go dormant until cool damp weather brings them back to life. If you keep them strugging at their Sisyphisian effort through the mid-summer with irrigation, they will naturally need more fertilizer to look photogenic.
Fertilizer and top-dressing. Our lawns do need fertilizer because they are deprived of natural sources of nutrients (fallen leaves, animal droppings, clover and other wild legumes with their nitrogen-fixing bacteria, silting from flooding, etc). When you bag or blow the clippings, then even more so - and you starve the worms, too. My top-dressing program not only fertilizes organically, but also improves the soil texture. I also fertilize lawns in June and September/October. I don't use water-soluble nitrogen, because most that will end up in the stream. I use mowing machines that mulch the clippings and fallen leaves. I don't need to use herbicides, because the grass is happy. And I don't use pesticides because there is no good reason to waste the money and to poison Creation.
Aeration. In nature, earthworms, moles, woodchucks, and other digging critters keep the topsoil loose and in motion. Loose soil is need for root growth, water and nutrient penetration, and to provide air for aerobic soil microbes. Our lawns tend to get compacted, and people try to kill their happy moles because they interfere with the "perfect lawn" (which, of course, is meant to be a reflection of our perfect selves, right?). Aeration of lawns and sports fields is essential, and should be done depending on how heavily the grass is tromped on. Some lawns, every two years. Sports fields need twice per year. There are two kinds of aerators. The spike aerators (like this) do nothing useful. What is needed is the plugger type (like this one, in photo above), which pulls out forty-fifty per square yard 2-4"-deep plugs out of the sod and deposits them on the surface. (it makes a temporary mess, but one good heavy rain removes most evidence of the plugs.) Plug aeration is commonly done in the Fall, but I like to do it in the Spring, after the grass gets growing thick and vigorously (May), and combine it with my biennial top-dressing project and with any overseeding that seems needed.
The downside of plugging is having dogs with muddy feet on your bed for a couple of days.
I use Preen on our perennial beds and shrub borders. I think Mrs. BD, the Weeder-in-Chief, appreciates it, but my Mom gives me heck for using it since she views it as lazy and possibly not environmentally acceptable.
As I understand it, it mainly prevents seeds from germinating. What's wrong with that? Yes, we mulch too, but seeds germinate in mulch.
Weeding plantings to make fresh space for the new weeds no longer interests me. I'd rather be playing tennis.
Lawns are dumb things to have, but almost everybody has some. It's expected nowadays, but gardens and plantings are more interesting, look more natural, are more inviting to birds and other friendly critters, and offer more privacy - and shade. On the other hand, everyone needs a space for croquet and badminton.
Once the preserve of the wealthy, lawns became de rigeur for the aspiring middle class during the 20th century, as new homeowners attempted to create miniaturized versions of grand English estates on 1/4, 1/2, 1- and 2-acre building lots.
The orgin of lawns was sheep-grazed fields. Sheep are the primitive machine which transforms grass into wool and mutton.
But the subject assigned to me is top dressing. (Bear in mind that I am talking about Northern and mid-western lawns with Bluegrass and fescue in them. That's all I know about. Southern lawns are an entirely different breed.)
I top dress my lawns every spring, and I know Bird Dog does too. He does it casually, but I do it methodically. I mix about 1/4 leaf compost, 1/8 light sand, 1/8 topsoil or potting soil, 1/4 peat moss and 1/4 composted manure in the big wheelbarrow and toss it around the ground after around the second grass cutting of spring. Probably plain peat moss or composted manure would do the trick just as well. Ideally, it all should be rather dry, but life is never ideal. Then I lightly rake it in - or have the lawn guys rake it in - so it doesn't compress the grass. I apply it rather heavily, and use around 40 wheelbarrow loads for the lawn areas I care about.
It's about stewardship of the land, and not a cheap nitrogen-intoxicated superficial green. We have to remember that lawns are not natural things, but they aren't plastic either.
As the last snows mostly melt, the soil de-freezes (OK, defrosts) a bit, and the blackbirds return, it's time to fertilize flowering shrubs and trees and perennial beds in Yankeeland. Any further snows will be short-lived.
Remember that roots grow long before green shoots appear. By the time growth appears, it's sort-of too late for plants' spring feeding - especially woody plants. It takes a while for the food to get into the soil, and even longer to get down to the roots and then up into the plant.
If you got too busy to do it in the fall, now is the time. I did my shrubs, roses, gardens, boxwoods, and lawns yesterday, and used up an old bag of Hollytone and an old left-over bag of lawn dolomite (lime) too. I have hollies and hybrid Rhodies in sheltered spots and a few Azaleas too where they are well-protected from winter winds even though we are north of the hybrid Rhodie and Azalea happy zone. North of the Holly zone too, but I love my hollies and the birds do, too.
Heck, I can even get good hardy Crepe Myrtles to thrive here. Green thumb, or dumb luck? They are well-sheltered, and close to walls and foundations. When they are in bloom up here, people wonder what the heck they are.
Need to remember to get my lawns plugged in early June, but I will probably forget to do it because it makes for a week of muddy dog paws on the beds and couches. A hard-packed lawn is an unhappy lawn. Fortunately, I decrease our lawn size every time we add a new garden. That's good - but weeding and mulching new gardens is bad. Too hard.
I have used both of them quite a bit for wildlife plantings at the farm. Berries, nut trees, apples, cherries, chestnuts, pines, etc. I just let nature deal with them. Some live, some die, and some are eaten by the beavers or deer. Wire fencing around them when they are small doesn't hurt, but still...
I also re-seed our pastures and meadows with clovers every few years. I simply spray-spread the seed on top early in the spring, and hope for the best. Seems to work OK, but clovers do not have a long life-span. Worn-out New England hillside meadows need some nitrogen from the clovers, especially if they are not nourished by enough cow or Moose or bear poo. The flood plains do just fine on their own, as long as they get flooded regularly.
Now is the right but final time to fertilize fruit trees, grape vines, ornamental trees, etc. in northern climes.
Those roots are alive and hungry right now, storing up fat for Spring before they go dormant - even though the leaves are off. Just go easy with the fertilizer on the apple trees. Excess fertilizer encourages rusts. Too little is better than too much for them.
And, while we're at it, don't forget to try my trick. If you have good strong perennial herbs in pots (sage, marjoram, thyme), turn the pots upside down in the dirt for the winter. Odds are that they will spring back to life with a vengeance when global warming warms things up in April. Even it they don't, it will protect your pots from cracking from ice.
I bring my 3 year-old Rosemary bush indoors, but people might have better ideas for that. I like having it in the kitchen so I can run my hands though it. Makes me smell good. It barely survives the winter, but jumps back to life when we cut it back, and put it outdoors in April. My bro keeps his potted Rosemary in his garage, like some people do with their figs. (I let my fig rough it. I just throw a tarp over it and hope for the best.) One of these years, I will plant my Rosemary next to the foundation and cover it with a couple of layers of polyurethane for the winter. The goal would be to have a 6' Rosemary bush like they have at Oxford, and everywhere in Italy.
This guy in CA proudly posted his healthy but ramshackle Rosemary hedge:
I have a fatal disease in my large, probably 100 year-old Copper Beech tree. I have diagnosed it as Beech Bark Disease. I've seen the same bark disease on many old Copper Beeches recently - areas of shedding bark on the trunk and dying branches high overhead. It's a damn shame.
Ten years ago we sat with a good pal, now deceased, and his wife on the porch of his golf club, sipping after-dinner single malts and smoking Cubans. And watching the Hummingbird Moths who were all over the solid planting of pink Cleome below the porch.
One of those magical moments. There are other reasons to plant annuals like Cleome, but those moths at dusk are the best reason. Here's a pic of one from Gardener's Index hovering over a Cleome:
Anybody who took my advice about growing Montauk Daisies, the succulent daisy which is a cultivar of the Seaside Daisy (common on Cape Cod, and totally different from the West Coast's beach daisy), is missing one piece of info which I have learned only now.
Yes, these wonderful late-bloomers are worth growing, but they need to be prunced twice. First, cut down to 6" in the later winter, but then again to around 14-16" in May. That's the trick to keeping them from becoming too leggy and sort-of falling apart.
I learned this yesterday. If you like these heat and drought-tolerant autumn-bloomers, remember that for next year. Mine are flopping all over now, before blooming as they always do, and I never bothered to ask a pro about it.
Like the Beach Rose, the Montauk Daisy originated in Japan.
Mrs. BD reports today, after trying Gibbs' recommendation, that a paste of vinegar and baking soda is quite effective for poison ivy. (Remember McGeek's case of poison ivy?)
Mrs. BD is highly sensitive to poison ivy, but when she gets weeding she stops paying attention and just rips along like a weeding machine.
Gibbs is usually right about things. I made her take some Benadryl too. Partly to compete with Gibbs, I guess.
A quote from "Harnessing the Earthworm" by Dr. Thomas J. Barrett, Humphries, 1947, with an Introduction by Eve Balfour; Wedgewood Press, Boston, 1959:
For more than sixty years these 160 acres had been farmed without a single crop failure. My grandfather was known far and wide for the unequalled excellence of his corn and other grain, and a large part of his surplus was disposed of at top prices for seed purposes. The farm combined general farming and stock raising; my grandfather's hobby, for pleasure and profit, was the breeding and training of fine saddle horses and matched Hambletonian teams. He maintained a herd of about fifty horses, including stud, brood mares, and colts in all stages of development. In addition to horses, he had cattle, sheep, hogs, and a variety of fowl, including a flock of about five hundred chickens which had the run of the barnyard,with a flock of ducks. Usually about three hundred head of stock were wintered. The hired help consisted of three or four men, according to the season, with additional help at rush seasons. This establishment was maintained in prosperity and plenty, and my grandfather attributed his unvarying success as a farmer to his utilization of earthworms in maintaining and rebuilding the fertility of the soil in an unbroken cycle. The heart of the farming technique was the compost pit.
I'll wrap up my Newport photo dump with a few pics from the Flower Show, which is the main reason Mrs. BD dragged me to Rhode Island last weekend. The Newport Flower Show is what the gardening and arranging ladies term an "important" show. It attracts garden club competitors from as far as Texas, and it raises lots of money for the Preservation Society of Newport County.
Mrs. BD did not have an entry in the show this year, but she likes to keep a finger on the pulse of things.
Last weekend's show was held at Rosecliff, one of the loveliest Newport cottages. Guy who built it was a Comstock Lode heir. My photos do not capture how crowded the place was with flower people and their tolerant husbands, mostly, like me, feigning deep interest and appreciation while furtively glancing at one's watch.
Re-posted today because I had a female Ruby-Throated flirting with me yesterday while I was watering some hanging baskets of flowers. Fearless critter. Seemed to want to frolic in the spray.
Chances are that the first time you saw a hummingbird, you paid it no attention, imagining it to be a passing dragonfly or some other fleeting buzzing bug. In the Eastern half of the US, we have only one species – the Ruby Throated.
This 3-4-inch bird is usually only seen when hovering over flowers, because otherwise he is tiny and darting in flight, and his wings are a humming blur. You have to be very close to hear the hum.
These insect-like birds are probably more abundant in your area than you realize, but if you want to see them often, you need a hummingbird garden. (Those sugar-water hummingbird feeders offer no real nutrition, and the red coloring is thought to be somewhat toxic.) He feeds on nectar and small bugs hidden in the flowers, and prefers flowers which are designed for pollination by hummingbirds – often red in color and vase-shaped for his long beak. Red Trumpet Vine (in photo) is a favorite, as is azalea in the south, but they like monarda too. I find their favorite at my place is Crocosmia – which is in bloom now along with the monarda, and the trumpet vine on my wall. I highly recommend Crocosmia – the bulbs are a bit expensive but, once established, they multiply rapidly and they have attractive foliage. White Flower Farm has a large selection. In the woods, I typically see hummingbirds around patches of Jewelweed, which likes damp areas.
Read more about the Ruby Throated here. How do these fragile creatures make it across the Gulf of Mexico to winter in South America?
The print is Audubon's, the Ruby Throat with Trumpet Vine.
Speaking of hummingbirds, don’t forget the Dixie Hummingbirds.
Our planting and transplanting season is now done, as is my anniversary gift to Mrs. BD which entailed two solid weekend days of being a submissive garden slave, taking all orders with shovel, wheelbarrow, trimmers, saws, mulch, and the final load of plantings. Beer breaks and a couple of ceegars, natch. I am the brawn, she is the brains.
Transplanting shrubs and perennials is like musical chairs. There is always at least one thing that ends up with no place to go, and is left to die, roots up in the sun. Murder.
Mrs. BD has been getting interested in putting dwarf shrubs in perennial borders in recent years. In this bed, we had moved some hybrid Rhodies out two months ago, and moved those lacecap hydrangeas back against the wall (they will revive just fine, but look a little wan right now). That left a hole for these three new red-leafed dwarf Weigelas to the left of the dwarf Buddleas. It will all fill in nicely in a year or so with the goal, of course, being no space between plants for weeds to grow:
The edge is Lady's Mantle, in full bloom. It makes a solid and subtle perennial edge with its pale yellow-green florets.
Hereabouts, it's time to yank out the Spring pansies. Many people have the nurseries fill their planters right about now, but people like Mrs. BD like to do them herself.
She says all you need to know is that a planter needs one thriller, a few spillers, and filler - with interesting foliage contrast and compatible color. It's a form of flower arranging. In a couple of weeks, these pots will be looking good:
Also known as Catmint (it is related to Catnip). It's a long-blooming front-of-the-border plant, and will re-bloom later if the exhausted blooms are cut off. It comes in a few cultivars of varying heights.
This was yesterday. Note the happy Digitalis on the left. Little Lamb's Ear Hydrangea in front.
Something valuable for your garden: a dwarf Buddleia called "Blue Chip." This new Buddleia (Butterfly Bush) is only 2' high, max, and thus can function like a perennial flower in a border while drawing butterflies from miles around. Plus they claim it blooms all summer, unlike my full-sized Buddleias. I have a spot for a few of these guys.
Wayside is the only place I know that has them. Loony Greenies should avoid them: they are genetically-engineered. Like Labrador Retrievers, corn on the cob - and cotton.
The Wood Hyacinth is not a true Hyacinth, the popular bulb brought to Europe from Turkey.
The Wood Hyacinth, or English Bluebell, or Common Bluebell, is a native of Western Europe. Today, there are many cultivars of this fine April/May-blooming woodland bulb which, when happy, spreads vigorously.
In my opinion, it is much preferable to the gaudy and artificial-looking, plastic-looking true Hyacinth.
Photo on right is a "Bluebell Woods" in England.
My photo below is our tiny patch of it this morning. It will spread though, in time.
Saw this tree in bloom today behind a very good fish store, growing out of a hole in the asphalt. Never seen this sort of tree before. The wisteria-colored, tubular 2" blooms hang down, and last year's nut-like seed pods are still on the branches. The trunk looks like the trunk of a fast-growing trash tree. Quite a wonderful small tree, with the elegant blooms before the leaves emerge:
Reader got the name for me on the first try. Thanks. I had no idea what it was: The Empress Tree, Paulownia tomentosa. AKA Foxglove Tree. The blossoms do resemble Digitalis.
For an "invasive" trash tree which will grow anywhere, it sure is mighty purty in early May. My other photos of it below -
Ever gnaw on a raw Rhubarb stem? I used to love that, when I was a kid. Especially the tender thin stems. Huge flavor, tangy, bitter, spicey.
While "researching" this post, I learned that it's commonly done in Turkey and Iraq. Our garden rhubarb came from China. The leaves are poisonous. There are lots of types of rhubarbs, most inedible.
Rhubarb is the most reliable edible perennial that you can have in your northern garden. Just throw some manure on them every Spring, and you're done. The only problem I have had with them (my last patch) was that the plants kept going to flower and seed without producing new stems. I guess I should have cut off the flowering stems sooner.
Even the pros get confused about how to grow the hundreds of cultivars of the beloved Hydrangea family of flowering shrubs. Each Spring, I renew my confusion - especially when it comes to the topic of pruning the different categories. Not to mention the newer ever-blooming types.
Most nursery plants are Asian in origin (obviously with plenty of genetic engineering applied to them for blooming purposes), but the old-fashioned Arborescens group derives from the North American wild plant. My favorites are the lacecap types, but I admire them all.
Here are a few things I have learned, none of which applies to all Hydrangeas:
- Hydrangeas like water, and generally do not prefer full-day sun. At least half-day is fine, preferably in the morning. Full shade does not work.
- The pink and/or blue hydrangeas are indeed acidity-sensitive in flower color
- Planting them where they are free to attain their full size without normal pruning (other than that all deciduous shrubs, once they are established and healthy, benefit from removal of 1/4 to 1/3 of the plant down to the ground, or at least the leggy or woody stems, each year) eliminates a lot of complexity.
- Save the dang plant label in a file (best to do with any new plant)
- Hydrangeas do not like much nitrogen fertilizing: it makes them grow leaves, not blooms.
- If you trim or prune your plant wrong, or at the wrong time, you won't get any bloom. Some bloom on new growth, some on last year's growth, and some seem just to do their own thing.
Non-stop rain in New England for a few days, converting the entire countryside to a wetland swamp. It brings drains to mind. French Drains aren't French. They are named after Mr. Henry Flagg French of Massachusetts, a judge and a drainage expert. Good concept.
This fellow build a good one. I like the fact that the word "tile" is still used for PVC pipe.
Glad I do not need any of them, though. In 1824, farmers did not build their houses where they would get flooded, where there was an underground spring, where there was poor drainage, or where they would have wet cellars. They checked first.
They did not consider every piece of land to be a building site.
Photo on right is a shallow French drain. Holes down, of course. (Dummies are known to install them with the perforations facing up.) You can rent one of those mini-backhoes, have a load of gravel delivered, and make one yourself. A plain old-fashioned ditch or swale works too.
Photo below is a constructed swale. Man-made or natural, a swale is just a pleasant drainage ditch or depression. A small vale, you might say.
Well-organized amateur gardeners keep some sort of calendar or journal of annual tasks to be done (eg April: prune forsythias when blooms done), and a record of things planted (with exact names and maintenance needs).
I keep a casual record and to-do list on my computer with links to tips and info that I tend to forget (I do have a lot of plants with Special Needs), but some more serious folks prefer these pre-printed formats.
Constructing and maintaining shrub and perennial gardens is a Maggie's Farm hobby. Here's good gardening advice from a commenter at some gardening site I was looking at the other day:
JUST STOP!
Take a deep breath and a few steps away from the tree. Look at the package you have created and realize that you are more of a "crammer" than a designer. Your apparent desire is not to better display your specimen but rather to create more room to cram in ever more plants - "I want to be able to have the bottom more open for plants under it."
I believe the overall effect of your landscape would be much improved if you graduated to the design level where you begin an analysis of what you already have and start editing. DIY'ers often fail to realize that as gardens mature, they are dealing with a different set of design parameters than when they began. This present situation requires a different thought process.
When you first began, it was probably "more is better" because you had so much open space to fill. Your landscape has matured to the point that it is now craving some unity and simplification -- yet, here you are trying to figure out how to add even more.
When you go out, do you put on every piece of jewelry that you own or do you select only a few that serve to highlight? Think about your garden in the same way.
Image is a well-balanced garden, mature and perfect, at Christchurch, Oxford, from a post on English Gardens
Thanks to AGW, looks like we're in for two days of soaking rain. That's perfect timing, because I did all of my Spring fertilizing this weekend: lawn, perennial gardens, shrubs, Raspberries - and Holly-Tone for the Rhodies, azaleas, hollies, etc. (I also put down Preen on most of the flower gardens. It saves a lot of trouble to put it down before the first weed seeds germinate.)
It makes sense to fertilize before things green up, because the roots wake up hungry and begin growing many weeks before anything green emerges. Early Spring is when roots do most of their growing.
Mrs. BD loves flowers and all that - she and her pals call it "plant material" because they use all sorts of things in their design efforts. 
As fall planting season approaches here in the Northern Hemisphere, here are two simple tips to save you money and hassle:
If you live in the Northeast, your gardens and plantings are, right now, being attacked by the unwanted and unwelcome alien Porcelainberry. 
It's been Babyland here this Spring at ye olde New England homestead. Lots of nests, lots of baby birds fledging right now.
We grow them in pots. Pretty colors, but the main point is for salads. 
Everybody has an opinion on pruning tomato plants. Here's my view of the subject.
Lots of plants are called "laurel" without being real members of the 
I was surprised to stumble upon the fact that the common earthworm, the gardener's friend, is not native to the US and Canada: most worm species are "invasive" introductions from Europe, and have been spread across the country in plant material.
Serious gardeners in New England, especially food-gardeners, build 
We always contend that lawns are foolish things to have. Foolish, and unnatural. We prefer meadows and gardens, but everybody needs a place to play croquet or softball, or to lie in the sun with a book, growing your basal cell carcinomas and your liver spots. We reluctantly acknowledge that, in some suburban areas, a sweeping lawn is a social if not an aesthetic requirement. 
"De-thatching" is a completely useless and unnecessary activity. No healthy soil needs it, and a healthy soil is the key to a decent sod. "Thatch" - old grass - will rapidly decompose or be eaten by worms in a good lawn, recycling the nutrients and keeping your worms fat and happy.
Should I Bag or Mulch the Clippings?
I use Preen on our perennial beds and shrub borders. I think Mrs. BD, the Weeder-in-Chief, appreciates it, but my Mom gives me heck for using it since she views it as lazy and possibly not environmentally acceptable. 
Lawns are dumb things to have, but almost everybody has some. It's expected nowadays, but gardens and plantings are more interesting, look more natural, are more inviting to birds and other friendly critters, and offer more privacy - and shade. On the other hand, everyone needs a space for croquet and badminton. 
It's time to flip through our 
Anybody who took my advice about growing Montauk Daisies, the succulent daisy which is a cultivar of the Seaside Daisy (common on Cape Cod, and totally different from the West Coast's beach daisy), is missing one piece of info which I have learned only now.
Mrs. BD reports today, after trying Gibbs' recommendation, that a paste of vinegar and baking soda is quite effective for poison ivy. (Remember McGeek's case of poison ivy?) 
Something valuable for your garden: a dwarf Buddleia called "Blue Chip." This new Buddleia (Butterfly Bush) is only 2' high, max, and thus can function like a perennial flower in a border while drawing butterflies from miles around. Plus they claim it blooms all summer, unlike my full-sized Buddleias. I have a spot for a few of these guys.
The Wood Hyacinth is not a true Hyacinth, the popular bulb brought to Europe from Turkey.
Ever gnaw on a raw Rhubarb stem? I used to love that, when I was a kid. Especially the tender thin stems. Huge flavor, tangy, bitter, spicey.
Non-stop rain in New England for a few days, converting the entire countryside to a 
